Iron Age
4 recorded milestones at this point in the record.
City-states such as Tyre, Sidon and Byblos built cedar ships and ran regular routes across the Mediterranean, trading dye, glass, timber and metals.
Why it mattered
Phoenician shipping carried the alphabet west and made the Mediterranean a single commercial world.
The Zhou overthrew the Shang and justified their rule with the idea that heaven withdraws its mandate from unjust kings.
Why it mattered
It gave East Asia a political theory in which rulers can legitimately be replaced — a template used for three thousand years.
Teachers in the Ganges plain composed dialogues probing the self, consciousness and the nature of reality beyond ritual practice.
Why it mattered
These texts founded a philosophical tradition that shaped Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism alike.
Workshops at Tyre crushed murex sea snails by the hundred thousand to extract a colourfast purple dye.
Why it mattered
The first industrial-scale chemical process, and the origin of purple as the colour of rank.
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Andes
Mesopotamia
Eurasian steppe
Greece
Italy
North Africa